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Author Topic: how long will queen cells keep?  (Read 5972 times)

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Offline rober

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how long will queen cells keep?
« on: May 13, 2019, 03:16:19 am »
it's been raining for a week & haven't been able to go thru hives. some new queens arrived Friday so i banked them until we got a break from the rain. on sunday morning i went to an outyard to install them in some nucs i'd made up. while there i checked 4 hives & they were all on the swarm launch pad. i went thru every frame & removed around 25 queen cells between the 4. i also pulled frames of honey & gave them frames with empty drawn comb & added supers. maybe that will get them out of the swarm mode. i put the undamaged queen cells in a JZ BZ queen transport box. they fit right into the queen cage holding cups. i then added a damp sponge & quite a few bees. how long will these cells last?? i have 2 more yards to check ( so i might have more cells ) & i'm thinking about making some more splits by adding 2-3 cells per nuc. one concern is not knowing their age is getting them installed before they hatch.
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Offline iddee

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Re: how long will queen cells keep?
« Reply #1 on: May 13, 2019, 04:13:32 am »
They will last as long as they are kept at 94F. and 72 % humidity, until they emerge.
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Offline tecumseh

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Re: how long will queen cells keep?
« Reply #2 on: May 14, 2019, 06:32:47 am »
There are two problems with 'wild' cells and both have to do with timing or age of the cell.  1) since you do not really know their age you also do not know the approximate date they will emerge.  2) Early in their development (but post capped stage) queens cells are extremely fragile and can be damaged by a long list of calamities.... the potential for ruining the cells is large.  Close to emergence stage (at this point you may note the very tip of the cells has had the wax removed and the tip will look a bit like roughed up cow hide) the cells are very robust and except for excess heat there is not much of a way to damage these. 

I guess what you can say is what you don't know is the larger problem here.

ps... as emerge virgin you only have a short window of time to get these into a mating device of some size (large or small).
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Offline rober

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Re: how long will queen cells keep?
« Reply #3 on: May 14, 2019, 07:20:56 am »
I made splits & installed these cells into queenless hives. to improve the odds I used multiple cells in each. now it's a waiting game.
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